You know what you do, Blount said drunkenly. *You just------』
All right, Biff said very quietly. No, I t Now you just behave yourself.』
Biff went to the end of the ter aurned with two glasses ht beer. The drunk picked up his glass so clumsily that beer slopped down on his hands and messed the ter. Biff sipped his portion with careful relish. He regarded Blount steadily with half-closed eyes. Blount was not a freak, although when you first saw him he gave you that impression. It was like something was
deformed about him—but when you looked at him closely each part of him was normal and as it ought to be. Therefore if this difference was not in the body it robably in the mind. He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with fners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do.
Biff cocked his head to one side and said, Where are you from?』
"Nowhere.』
*Now, you have to be born somewhere. North Carolina —Tennessee—Alabama—some place.』
Blounts eyes were dreamy and unfocused. Carolina, he said.
I tell youve been around, Biff hinted delicately.
But the drunk was not listening. He had turned from the ter and was staring out at the dark, empty street. After a moment he walked to the door with loose, uain steps.
Adios, he called back.
Biff was alone again and he gave the restaurant one of his quick, thh surveys. It ast one in the m, and there were only four or five ers in the room. The mute still sat by himself at the middle table. Biff stared at him idly and shook the few remaining drops of beer around itom of his glass. Then he finished his drink in one slow swallow a back to the neer spread out on the ter.
This time he could not keep his mind on the words before him.
He remembered Mick. He wondered if he should have sold her the pack of cigarettes and if it were really harmful for kids to smoke. He thought of the way Miarrowed her eyes and pushed back the bangs of her hair with the palm of her hand.
He thought of her hoarse, boyish void of her habit of hitg up her khaki shorts and swaggering like a cowboy in the picture show. A feeling of tenderness came in him. He was uneasy.
Restlessly Biff turned his attention to Sihe mute sat with his hands in his pockets and the half-finished glass of beer before him had bee warm and stagnant. He
would offer to treat Sio a slug of whiskey before he left.
What he had said to Alice was true—he did like freaks. He had a special friendly feeling for sick people and cripples.
Whenever somebody with a harelip or T.B. came into the place he would set him up to beer. Or if the er were a hunchback or a bad cripple, then it would be whiskey on the house. There was one fellow who had had his peter and his left leg blown off in a boiler explosion, and whenever he came to town there was a free pint waiting for him. And if Singer were a drinking kind of man he could get liquor at half priy time he wa. Biff o himself. Thely he folded his neer and put it uhe ter along with several others. At the end of the week he would take them all back to the storeroom behind the kit, where he kept a plete file of the evening neers that dated back without a break for twenty-one years.
At two oclock Blouered the restaurant again. He, brought in wi